Saja Typeworks Chapbook

This little 2" by 2" chapbook was produced as a miniature portfolio including a selection of my typeface design projects and was intended to take the place of business cards for the upcoming TypeCon conference in Seattle.

The biggest challenge in this project was actually due to its small size. At 2" by 2", there was limited space available to display work, so the samples became a teaser rather than the extensive specimen I’d originally intended. Happily, by reducing the page count, I was able to use higher quality paper and really elevate the feel of the book.

Modern Cyrillic Competition

The annual Modern Cyrillic competition judges new Cyrillic typefaces released in the previous year. In addition to the character set of the typeface, designers are required to submit samples of the typeface in use. In 2014, Microsoft submitted Sitka, a new typeface we created in partnership with Matthew Carter, and I created the entry documents for the submission.

One of the primary features of Sitka is it’s extensive set of optical sizes from Banner to Caption. As such, a magazine spread seemed the most appropriate form to present the full range of sizes. For the text, I located an old treatise on “How to select the best horse” that provided not only header and body text, but also footnotes, subheads and a variety of other typographic features which allowed me to show the full capability of Sitka.

Sitka was one of the winners of the competition and this poster was chosen by the organizers for display in the awards exhibition in Moscow.

Music@Menlo

When I was a student, I had the opportunity to design marketing materials for a local music festival called Music@Menlo. On the left are some of the projects I worked on.

The postcard was intended for distribution to festival attendees and the local community as a marketing tool. Looking at it now as a more experienced designer, I feel that the hierarchy, spacing and font weight choice could be improved, but it was well-received and raised awareness for the festival.

The map was created as a guide to the holiday Music@Menlo donor event held to thank them for their support. In creating the map, I used a large-to-small approach—first indicating the major highways in the area (280 / 101), then the major roads (Woodside and El Camino Real) before focusing in on the local region where the event was being held. This would help attendees from around the region find their way regardless of which route was the most convenient.

The ticket was designed for a holiday benefit concert for the festival. The design captures the brand identity of Music@Menlo and provides the ticket holder with the feeling of attending a chamber music concert, while stating all necessary information clearly.

Japanese Typesetting

In my first typography class, we were assigned the task of finding a book with poor typography and redesigning it. Months later, I thought it would be interesting to reproduce the project with a non-English book—and specifically one with a very different typesetting approach. As such, I chose the Japanese edition of “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, or「人を動かす」.

The main focus of my redesign was to clean up the excessive design elements and establish clear hierarchies. I increased the size and weight of the chapter titles to highlight them, and centered the chapter numbers above them. I also removed the section numbering and eliminated the need for leader dots by placing the page numbers for each section immediately following the section title. I was able to set them horizontally as Japanese fonts provide half-, and third-width forms for numbers exactly for this kind of scenario.

Overall, I’m really happy with the feel of the new table of contents. It is much easier to parse and locate the section one is looking for.

Redesigned

Original

TypeCon Ad

When Microsoft was set to announce its new color font format, I was tasked to create an ad for the TypeCon program. For this ad, I was inspired by the old VW ‘lemon’ ads in which VW intentionally made their Beetle sound like a terrible car to own, at the same time highlighting its best features.

In writing the copy I wanted to make it seem like this amazing color font advancement is so simple as to be ‘boring’.